A word before the drills. Anticipation training fails in one predictable way: it gets treated as a novelty station — ten minutes of "watch the opponent" once a month — instead of a demand woven into normal training. The drills below are deliberately simple. None needs equipment beyond balls, a court, and in one case a notebook. What they need is repetition and a coach who insists on the read every single time. For each drill I give the setup, the players required, what to watch for, and the mistake I see coaches make most often when running it.
Cue-reading drills: train the eyes before the feet
1. The caller drill
Setup. A normal rally or feeding pattern, baseline to baseline. The receiving player must call the incoming shot out loud — "slice," "crosscourt," "short," "line" — before the opponent makes contact. Late calls do not count. Players: two, or one player and a coach who varies feeds honestly.
- What to watch for. The call arriving earlier week by week. In session one the player calls at contact; within two or three sessions the call should come as the backswing shapes. When the calls go quiet, the eyes have drifted back to the ball — restart the demand.
- The common coaching mistake. Accepting calls made at or after contact. A call at contact is a description, not a read. Hold the line on before contact even if the player's accuracy drops at first — accuracy returns, and now it is built on real cues.
2. The shadow drill
Setup. The player stands at the net post or behind the baseline, racquet down, watching a live rally or a feeder. Their only job is to move — split step and shade in the direction the next shot is going, before it is struck, using the hitter's grip, backswing, shoulder turn, and balance. No hitting at all. Players: three (two rallying, one shadowing), or two with a coach feeding.
- What to watch for. The first movement getting earlier and smaller. A good shadow session ends with the player drifting the right way on nearly every ball off preparation alone. Rotate the shadow player every few minutes — the watching is intense if it is done properly.
- The common coaching mistake. Letting the shadow player watch the ball. Take the ball away from their job completely: they are studying a human being, not a rally. If they can tell you afterward what the hitter's slice preparation looks like, the drill worked.
Eyes on the opponent: constraint games
3. Eyes through contact
Setup. Live points with one constraint: the moment your own ball crosses the net, your eyes must be on the opponent — feet, preparation, balance — and stay there through their contact. To make it checkable, the coach stands behind one baseline and flashes fingers as the opponent hits; the player must call the number while playing the point. Miss the number, lose the point. Players: two plus a coach, or two on the honor system once the habit is established.
- What to watch for. Juniors ball-watch far more than they believe — the first session's numbers are usually humbling, and that is the point. Watch for the recovery step starting earlier once the eyes move earlier; that is the transfer you are after.
- The common coaching mistake. Running it as a gimmick for one session and moving on. This is a habit, not a trick — it needs to reappear in live-ball play every week until watching the opponent is simply how the player plays. The ball tells you nothing new mid-flight; the opponent tells you everything.
Pattern anticipation: closed-pattern live ball
4. Constrained-options points
Setup. Live points where one player's choices are limited by rule — for example: any ball they take outside the singles line may only go crosscourt or high through the middle; or every short ball must be approached down the line. The unconstrained player knows the rule and must use it — committing recovery and position early, hunting the ball they know is coming. Play first to seven, then swap roles. Finally, remove the constraint and keep playing. Players: two, coach optional.
- What to watch for. The unconstrained player physically committing early — moving before contact, arriving balanced — rather than knowing the rule intellectually and still waiting. Then the real lesson: with the constraint removed, the "free" player still follows the pattern most of the time. Point that out. Real opponents are constrained too — by geometry, by habit — they just never announce it.
- The common coaching mistake. Keeping the constraint secret from the reading player "to make it realistic." Backwards — the drill exists to teach what committing to a known pattern feels like. Discovering hidden patterns is the next skill, and it is trained by charting, not by guessing games.
5. The two-ball decision drill
Setup. Feeds come in pairs. The coach feeds ball one and immediately moves — recovering left, right, or sneaking forward. The player's target is decided by the coach's movement, not planned in advance: hit away from the coach, or behind a coach who moves early. Ball two follows straight away and punishes any player who admired their first shot instead of reading the next situation. Run it in sets of ten pairs. Players: one player, one coach or feeding partner.
- What to watch for. The head coming up and finding the coach during the hitting action, not after it. Players who cannot do this hit beautiful balls to the wrong places — which is exactly what they do in matches. Decision accuracy matters more here than shot quality; say so out loud.
- The common coaching mistake. Moving on a fixed rotation the player memorizes by the third pair. Move late, vary honestly, and occasionally stand still — the read has to be real or the drill trains nothing.
Serve reads
6. Call the serve
Setup. The server practices their normal serving rotation. The returner calls direction — "wide," "body," "T" — out loud before contact, reading toss location, shoulder line, and racquet path. Track the correct-call percentage across twenty serves; it makes progress visible and juniors compete with the number. Then let them return, still calling silently to themselves. Players: two — and the drill costs the server nothing, so it fits inside any serving session.
- What to watch for. Percentages climbing over weeks, and — the real prize — the returner starting to tell you why: "toss drifted right, so wide slider." A read the player can explain is a read they own. Expect most juniors to discover their regular practice partners telegraph far more than anyone realized.
- The common coaching mistake. Only running it against one server. Cues are individual — one player's toss drift means the slider, another's means nothing. Rotate servers so the player learns to find cues, not memorize a teammate.
Match assignments
7. The charting assignment
Setup. During a teammate's practice set or a tournament match the player is not in, assign one specific question and a notebook: chart serve direction by score. Or every shot the opponent hits when stretched wide. Or what they do on the first ball after a netted error. One question per assignment — never "chart everything." Ten to fifteen minutes, then the player reports the tendency they found and, if it was a teammate, tests it next time they play them. Players: one, plus a match to watch.
- What to watch for. Specific findings — "she served wide on both break points" — rather than vague impressions. Over a season, watch charting change how the player talks about their own matches: patterns, probabilities, tendencies. That shift in language is the skill arriving, and it is a large part of the match intelligence I described in what makes a good tennis player.
- The common coaching mistake. Assigning charting as busywork for players sitting out, then never asking for the findings. The report-back is the drill. Unexamined charts teach nothing; a two-minute conversation about one chart teaches pattern-hunting for life.
Building them into a weekly plan
None of these drills deserves its own training day. They are seasoning, not the meal — small, relentless doses inside normal work. A structure I use with competitive juniors:
- Daily, inside the warm-up: the caller drill for the first five minutes of every rally warm-up. It costs nothing and keeps the eyes switched on from ball one.
- Twice a week, inside live ball: one constraint game per session — eyes through contact one day, constrained-options points another. Fifteen minutes, then normal point play with the same demand carried over.
- Weekly, inside serve practice: call the serve for one basket whenever return work is on the schedule, rotating servers.
- Weekly, around competition: one charting assignment with a report-back, plus the two-ball decision drill in any private or small-group session where a coach is feeding.
Run that structure for eight weeks and the reads stop being drills — they become how the player watches tennis. If you want the thinking behind each drill, go back to the anticipation guide; and for structured video training on this and the rest of the development picture, Saviano Online has free material you can start with today.